Posts Tagged ‘social media’

Facebook announced another eco-friendly effort to continue greening up its empire. They will have a new server farm located in Luleå, Sweden. Because this location in Sweden sits in the freezing cold (the Arctic to be exact), the servers will be cooled naturally saving tons of energy.

With all of the activity on Facebook, its servers are working hard around the clock and produce a lot of excess heat. Traditionally, server farms require expensive, complicated air conditioning systems to prevent over heating. But when your servers are sitting in the Arctic, cooler temperatures will naturally create a cooling system. Facebook’s server farms span 175,000 square feet. It costs $75 million each year to run the servers in the Arctic. Imagine the costs of having a server farm in a warm climate- yikes! The Swedish server farm will also enjoy the benefits of the nearby Luleå River, which provides green and affordable hydro-electric power.

Luleå is in Northern Sweden and is as close to the North Pole as Siberia, and averages a chilly 35 degrees Fahrenheit year round.

Facebook is the second most visited website behind Google. With that said, speculation is growing that the popular networking site may have reached its peak. After a blockbuster growth month in May 2010 of more than 7.8 million new US users, June supplied a growth of only 320,000. Privacy concerns surrounding Facebook is believed to be the explanation for this dropoff.

Though growth rates associated with Facebook have been inconsistent, researchers are finding that its users are becoming more and more addicted once they’ve joined and explored Facebook’s networking capabilities, especially women.

Last week, a poll that surveyed 1,605 adult users found that 34% of women ages 18-34, admitted that Facebook was the first thing that they thought of when they woke up. Further, many said they check Facebook before doing anything else in the morning, including using the restroom. Here are some other interesting statistics from the responses of the same demographic:

* 63% use Facebook for career networking
* 20% admitted to doing middle of the night checks on Facebook
* 48% get their daily news from Facebook posts
* 57% stated they talk to people online more than face to face

Generally speaking, 50% of the 400+ million Facebook users are logged in on any given day. The average user creates 70 pieces of content per month and is connected to 60 pages, groups, or events. The average amount of friends per user is 130 and in general, over 500 billion minutes per month are spent on Facebook.

With these stunning statistics is the June growth decline a cause for alarm for Facebook’s masterminds? If privacy concerns subside, Facebook should have lasting power. The site is very user-friendly which is extremely important with technology becoming more and more advanced. Moreover, users sure have a lot of stock and time invested in their profiles. Switching to a different cyber hangout seems like an unrealistic transition, at least for a while.